Re: [Fsfe-uk] IBM says bye-bye to PC

[Simon Waters]

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Graham Seaman wrote:
| Paul Mobbs wrote:
|
|> Well, it had to happen sooner or later.
|>
|> Does thi smean they're ditching small systems because consultancy
|> makes more money???
|>
|>
|>
| They say they  think everythings going to be on demand.
|
| http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/08/ibm_lenovo_memo/
|
| The strategy (which I find unbelievable, but I keep hearing it)

The switch from hardware to services is a long establish "meme" at
the top levels of the computer industry, certainly it was clearly
articulated at the top levels of ICL that the hardware market would
have ridiculously low margins in the foreseeable future a long time
before they sold their PC business (such as it was) to Fujitsu, and
that a migration to services would be the only way to maintain the
margins expected.

It isn't clear to me why the service sector won't become saturated
with IBM, Oracle, HP (and presumably ICL still) all competing for a
share. Still IBM are well positioned if provisioning on demand does
take off, and I expect a lot of thin client computing to happen,
although I'm not sure whether the "thick end" will be in IBM data
centers, or just your "desktop PC" (be it at work, or home).
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